Amen to the above, I thank you on the many insights of Christianity, like I said, I had a lot of anger when I found out I was sick, and like I said, I grew up as an atheist raised by my grandparents and didn't know anything about Christianity until I was forced to live with my mother when she was supposedly had gotten clean from her prescription narcotic abuse, which was total bullshit, and forced into a Catholic High School, which totally screwed up the most important years of my informative growing period, from 14 years to 17 I attended, and fell like I was a total outcast. I went along with everything, after learning a couple times not to doubt anything said, by being slapped with rulers, I was punched in the gut by a nun for saying " for Jesus Christ" and when I urinated for two days I bled. I thought at that age I was wrong and didn't tell anyone bout how these nuns tortured me, so I just learned to shut up and agree with all they hAd to say. I really want to believe their is something out there greater than me, I know there is, but like I said, I just don't know what. Believe it to not, even though I am uncertain, I have prayed to God many times throughout my illness, and my husband has even said that there may be a God, you are getting better, you are responding to treatment, that may be the sign that I was looking for. It's all so confusing, I agree so much with beafbisquit, about how many people have been killed over religion? Remember the world trade series centers? Then wars were created over that, not because of payback, but for mans greed for oil! We didn't go after bin laden, we went to war with Iraq than Afghanistan all over lies about nuclear weapons, yellow cake uranium which was a lie, just a reason for our greed to get oil.
You see all through history, which is scary, because history repeats itself, all of the wars fought over religion, the crusades, there were probabably 8 to 10 of them with many people killed over the name of religion. They use religion as a pretext to make offensive war for personal profit, ie: to get land. The witch hunts in Salem, the list goes on.
I see so much hypocrisy around me, my husband's ex wife, ALWAYS says, "I'm a Christian, I would never do that", yet she is one of the most perverse, evil person I have ever met! I have tried to forgive her, but she has been divorced from my husband for over 18 years, and is still obsessed with my husband, and always makes up lies about me, she has posted on my Facebook account that I am a crack whore, which I have never even tried in my entire life, I swear. Tried snorting In my college years, but it was a short phase while in college, I was never an addict. But she used my friends info to accept her as a friend and posted so many lies that hurt me and my family. She calls my husband a rapist, that her child with him is a result of him raping and beating her, yet she had his child and married him! Yet she claims she is a Christian, goes to church like 3 times a week, and has bible studies at her house, yet she does nothing but lies and hurts people. She has sent me emails with attachments of old videos of her having sex with my husband, even sent them to my parents and my son from my previous marriage. And I see all my neighbors, I'm the outcast of the street, they seem to all go to the same church, yet on Sundays they wear their nice clothes and go to church on Sundays, and act like perfect Christians, but the rest of the week, some of them are horrible. They have stolen from us, if I leave anything in my car or my yard, it will be stolen. Now I have a security system and have had to go to court over them stealing our mail. Which had a credit card in it, and this methhead stole thousands of dollars. I am not a snitch, but it had to recover the money from my bank so I had to file a police report, even though we refused to press charges. His children then egged my house and car, so now we have cameras and a good security system.
Yet I do know some incredibly nice Christians that actually are great people, who are very kind and giving, and do live a life that the bible would approve of. I guess there are just good Christians and bad, just like aethiest, I'm sure there are some wonderful good ones, and some bad seeds like every religion I have found.
I'm sorry, I feel like I took your thread and feelings away, Hephaestus420, it was just so refreshing to see someone else, felt the same way I did. I felt guilty also, as you did with your family, it's always nice to know that you are not alone, and it has given me more insight into religion. I know Buddhism is really not a religion, but I relate to it the most for right now, and I appreciate that people here are open to others views and thoughts, even if they do not agree with them, they have a right, as we all do, thank you, first amendment for free speech!